Why Are CEOs Paid So Much More Than You? - Richard Murphy

14th December 2025

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Dec 14, 2025 #ExecutivePay #TaxReform #WealthInequality
Chief executives in the UK and the US are now paid hundreds of times more than the people who actually create value in their companies. This is not innovation or entrepreneurship - it is extraction.

In this video, I explain why extreme executive pay is a driver of inequality, weak productivity, falling morale, and political corruption. I also show how tax can be used not to raise revenue, but to change behaviour – by making excessive pay expensive.

Drawing on proposals I developed for the TUC and current legislation proposed in the United States, I explain how fair pay ratios could be enforced through the tax system, why shareholders – not society – should bear the cost of excess, and why democracy itself is at risk if we do nothing.

Tax exists to shape outcomes. This is one outcome that it must shape.